A newly discovered manuscript by the young Ernest Hemingway is unlikely ever to be published after his family refused permission.

The five-page story - titled My life in the Bull Ring with Donald Ogden Stewart - is expected to fetch at least $18,000 (£10,000) at auction.

The piece, written in 1924, is said to be a parody about a bullfight in the Spanish city of Pamplona.

Hemingway expert J. Gerald Kennedy said the work was "not great literature".

Classic

"It's pretty typical of the kind of after-hours parody Hemingway was writing in Paris in the mid-20s.

"He's still a year away from writing The Sun Also Rises," added the Louisiana State University professor, talking about the writer's classic tale.

To publish a new Hemingway find, permission must be granted by both the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and the Hemingway estate.

The Foundation wanted to publish it - but the family did not.

Suzanne Balaban, vice president and director of publicity at Scribner's, Hemingway's original publisher, said the estate did not feel they had "explored the best way to present this story to the public".

Envelope

Christie's auction house in New York plans to auction the carbon-copy manuscript and a handwritten letter from Hemingway on 16 December.

Donald Stewart, who owns the manuscript, had the documents for more than 20 years without realising it.

He made the discovery recently in an envelope left by his father, Donald Ogden Stewart, who died in 1980.

Hemingway had asked his father, who was a successful satirist and screenwriter, to try to get the story published in Vanity Fair, but he kept it instead.